Stealing Flowers

by Edward St Amant

  The afternoon was more of the same, absolute slavery, and at four o’clock, when Lloyd said, “Let’s hit the showers.” I didn’t even give it a second thought. I ended up naked with Lloyd in the showers, but by the time that it hit me, he had soaped and scrubbed himself without even looking at me. He dried off within sight, but was completely distracted. His body was lean and his penis now was fully-developed like Terry Kray’s. He also had developed biceps, twice the size of mine, and a chest of which I was envious.

  That night, after eating, I retreated to bed and slept through to the next morning, not even looking at the material on drilling. Larry drove me to a free-standing building, the Kroffer-Danna Electronic Complex, in East Orange on Meadowdowns Crescent. It looked large and was well treed and landscaped. Ralph Peat’s Electronic Testing Equipment stood exactly in the middle at the front of the building. I waved to Larry and tried the door as he drove away, then noticed the bell. I rang and waited. A fifty-year-old thin man answered. His light trim graying beard both hid and revealed his face in a strange sort of combination. His short hair was a tangle, but was also recently cut. He didn’t weigh one-hundred and thirty pounds and looked rather light-weight in every sense of the expression, however I instantly liked him and offered my hand.

  “I’m Ralph,” he said. He ignored my hand and locked the door behind us. We walked through a small reception area to a narrow deep open room which appeared to be in complete chaos. Appliances of every sort, some of them stacked on one another, stood at the back wall. Lathes, large precision drills, and twenty-five or so power machines of every sort, stood in long rows down both sides. In the narrow walkway down the middle, roles of sheets of metal, wires, and electronic paraphernalia lay to the sides. The ceiling was twelve feet above me, and to the side, above the paraphernalia, crown-racks held more equipment and raw materials. Three enormous tool cabinets stood to my immediate right and most of the drawers were half opened and tools and portable power gadgets lay everywhere. Buckets, metal barrels, and plastic containers, held punched-out pieces or metal-shavings and were all marked with black magic markers.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “It’s Ralph’s Palace,” he said grimly. “Stan has given me specific instructions for you. I hope you’re as bright as he thinks you are. I don’t kiss butt. If you can’t cut mustard, believe me, Stan will be the first to know.”

  His eyes were focused. What came to my mind was that he was trustworthy, but not as hard as he depicted. I knew I’d be able to impress him. I didn’t know if I’d a mechanical mind, I thought I probably didn’t, but I was damn sure that building a refrigerator and a stove would make Stan believe I did. I’d every intention of succeeding.

  “This morning you’re going to key punch and mold small parts for the fridge you are going to build,” he continued. “Let me tell you how it’s going to work. The doors, body, freezer-compartment, compressor, condenser, expansion valve, and evaporator, will be the only parts supplied. Other than that, you have to make, mold, find, and otherwise fabricate, the parts from within these four walls and make them all work. For the fridge, the passing grade is either it keeps ice-cream frozen for twenty-four hours, or you fail. Then, our relationship ends. You have six working days to complete it, but you can do it faster by coming here whenever you wish to work on it. I’ll get you keys and the access codes. Do you have any idea how a fridge works?”

  I shook my head. “In a car,” he went-on, “as you probably know, there are two essential ingredients, gas and electricity. In a fridge there are four. The evaporator vaporizes a refrigerant, in your case, freon, to absorb the heat from the box. It’s then drawn into the compressor and elevated to high pressure, raising the temperature. The hot gas is then condensed to liquid in the condenser. From here the liquid flows through an expansion valve, its pressure and temperature reduced to the conditions that are maintained in the evaporator. It sucks out heat and is a completely closed cycle. With no leaks it could last indefinitely.” He smiled. “Don’t look so scared, it’s simpler than it sounds. While you have to build the thing, you don’t have to reinvent it. Taking into account your age and lack of experience, I’ve written a design for you. Come, I’ll show you.”

  His office was an extension of the pandemonium of the outer room. Binders, newspapers, magazines, spare parts, dirty coffee cups, a water cooler and half-size fridge, and even items like sunglasses and hair-spray, had been scattered throughout his office without sense. I’d come to realize that there was just the two of us in “Ralph’s Palace.”

  “Sit,” he said and passed me a binder. Within was a step-by-step plan to build the fridge and the instructions were simple. Then it struck me. We were playing a game. He had to convince me that he was a tough nut, screwed on tight, and I would have to work relentlessly to please him, but on the other hand, he’d no intention of letting me fail, his relationship with Stan depended on me passing this. I suddenly felt much better.

  “What rate of pay were you expecting?” he asked.

  I hadn’t been expecting any, but at once came to a figure. I would ask for what Lloyd was earning at Tappets. “Fifteen dollars an hour,” I said.

  He had just taken a mouthful of what I assumed to be coffee and spit it all over his desk, some of it on me. “What?” he shouted angrily.

  I could see that he was genuinely piqued. “Fifteen dollars a day I meant to say.”

  He sat back down. “That’s better,” he said. “Go get started. If there’s any questions, I’m here, but I’m not babysitting you.”

  I studied the first page. A long list of parts had to be found, punched-out, and molded, and I at once set about doing this. That night at bedtime, I imagined that Sally and I ran Tappets. We traveled the world over and bought businesses or saved people. We grew enormously powerful and intervened in Cyprus to stop the war. We saved President Nixon from Watergate and prevented the communists from North Vietnam from invading the south. Eventually we ruled the world and brought democracy to every nation. At one o’clock, I awoke in a perfect world and slid in beside Sally’s warm body, kissing her. She’d taken to sleeping naked. The next day, I returned to Ralph’s Palace and began lining up all the parts. By the end of the day, stopping only for a quick sandwich, I was done and ready to start assembling next Tuesday. With my first pay from Ralph, I bought Band on the Run by Paul McCartney and Moondance by Van Morrison.

  “What are you paying me?” I asked Stan when I told him Ralph had paid me cash and showed him my new albums.

  “What’s Ralph paying you?”

  “Fifteen dollars a day.”

  “We’ll pay you twenty.”

  I was elated, not just with the money, but with my progress on the refrigerator, my relationship with Sally, and my whole life. However, all the while, the time ticked, and the marshals who enforce The First Law of Life for people unlucky by birth, especially for orphans, the law which says that when everything is going well, things are certain to go wrong, were amassing on my borders in great hordes. A big problem exists with blocking out the paranoia that springs forth in your mind about the first law: You deny it. You say that the reasoning seems faulty, that payment won’t ever come due, that you can have endless luck like the rest of the people. Nevertheless, you’re secretly afraid that it’s not faulty reasoning at all, and that in fact, it’s discerning of an order you can’t comprehend. You sense you are powerless against the forces of the universe. You ask, ‘What is more compelling than to be young and in love?’ You think you’re completely protected, but of course, they’ll use your age and love against you. Who controls the forces who would destroy love in one of its purest forms, innocent pubescent romantic love such as Romeo and Juliet, or such as Sally and me? I didn’t know it then, but they’re everywhere, and they love that kind of tragedy.

  A week later, on the Friday, Clara had a stroke and her chances of recovery were low. Una packed up and left for the island on Saturday. Mary was in Japan and Stan was at work. Sally and I had t
he whole place to ourselves. It broke forth as a gorgeous June day, hot, but not so bad as to make you sweat standing still. Sally wore a bright blue two-piece bathing suit and I had on long grey trunks. We uncovered the pool and dragged out the patio furniture. Sally made some lemonade and brought it out with rippled potato chips.

  “That’s the phone ringing,” she said before we dove in.

  “Wait for me,” I called back as I ran to get the phone. I talked to Stan for a minute and he promised to be no later than five o’clock, which was fine with me. Rushing back to the pool in bare feet, I hit the door bracket with my toe and flew face down onto the patio cement. I looked up in shock. Sally must have known from the tears in my eyes that I was hurt.

  She rose and held her chest. “Are you okay?” Without getting up, I rolled over. My chest was badly scraped, so were my palms. It certainly felt like I had broken my toe and I used all my will-power not to cry. The skin above the knee was also mildly scraped, and of all things, my nose began to bleed. Sally rushed over, a look of sheer terror was in her eyes, and it was so dramatic that it made me laugh.

  “It’s okay, Sal,” I said. I felt the top of my nose and the skin had been scraped off. “Go get some bandages and Ozonol,” I said.

  Sally rushed away. The interlocked brick lay several feet before the smooth patio stones around the pool and was quite rough. I had been a fool to be running in that area without shoes. I stood up and could walk. Relief washed over me. A broken toe would have killed the summer. I knew the chlorine in the pool-water would be better than anything else for my wounds, so I dove in. It stung badly, and what was worse, I knew I had to briskly rubbed all my scraped areas to get the dirt out. The abrasion on the tip of my nose was agony to rub.

  I crawled out of the pool and lied on the edge, facing the sun, dizzy and feeling like I might faint. Sally came over with towels and rubbed the cream on my sores, kissing me on the lips when she was done. I kissed her back and soon I was excited. Slipping the bottom of her bathing suit off, we began making out. Even though Una had warned us that any such provocative behavior would change everything if we were caught, I wholeheartedly joined in the recklessness. When Sally lay back, I took off my trunks. Blood from my face dripped on her small breasts and it got spread around with my hands. It felt good to be out of the sun and making love. Sally’s screams seemed to come to my ears from far away. I looked up and literally jumped off her in front of Aunt Gayle’s eyes. With me being excited and my cuts and scrapes bleeding, I can only imagine what she thought, but the look she gave, sent a shiver through me that I will remember clearly for the rest of my life. It was a look of pure hate. Every time I had to see her, I’d to live through that memory. I covered myself with my hands and jumped into the pool so that my privates were out of her vision. I scrambled and put on my trunks. I was one day from finishing building my fridge and I wondered now if I would ever complete it, if I’d be kicked out of the family. Sally had her swim suit back on.

  “Aunt Gayle, what are you doing here?” she asked.

  I could tell Sally was furious. “Are you all right?” Gayle asked as though with great concern. “Did he rape you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s blood on you, dear.”

  This I saw made Sally even angrier. “Why don’t you mind your own business,” she said, “you should have rang the doorbell or even phoned first. Do you think you can just walk right in here?”

  Gayle backtracked into the house. Sally dove into the pool, and when she surfaced, she hugged me, her body trembling. Gayle came back out to the edge of the pool and looked at us as one might of the condemned, her liquid eyes swimming in pleasure. “I told her not to marry a nonbeliever,” she whispered. “There’s the doorbell. That will be the police.”

  Never was I more sure that our pure and innocent romantic love lay in ruins. “You’ve called the police?” I asked in shock, grabbing Sally’s hand and racing out of the pool. “You fool.”

  “Where are we going?” Sally gasped as we raced past Gayle into the house.

  “Upstairs to get dressed and to phone Stan,” I said loud enough for Gayle to hear. I knew I should phone Una and ask for advice, but there was no time and it wouldn’t have made any difference. I changed and phoned. Isaac answered.

  “Get my dad,” I said in a rush, while dressing.

  “Your father is on his way home.”

  Forgetting my manners, I slammed the phone down. “Damn!” I thought of running away and escaping what I had to face, but Sally returned from her room shaking in fear, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.

  “I hate her,” she whispered.

  I phoned the operator and gave her Una’s Jamaican number, but no one answered. I realized that this was the moment Satan had chosen to attack and they had picked it carefully. “Let’s leave,” I suggested.

  “Dad would be even more angry.”

  A tap on the door stopped her in mid sentence. “What?” I called.

  “It’s the police,” a sharp male voice said.

  “Come in,” I said and held Sally’s hand. The door opened and two male officers walked into the room. They were both large young men. The largest one had his hat in hand and with his brush-cut and several red pimples on his face and head, he looked almost cruel, but his eyes were neutral, maybe even kind.

  The other officer had wavy brown hair and he clearly looked annoyed, but his eyes weren’t judgmental either, but rather diverted by his assessment of us. I saw he was changing his mind even as he approached us and that they were both unhappy about being here, that it was an unpleasant task. Aunt Gayle stood out in the hall, her eyes still not able to conceal her pleasure.

  “What’s happened here?” the second officer asked.

  I was anxious to answer his first question coherently, but I may have mumbled slightly. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen,” I said.

  He looked at Sally.

  “And you, dear?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Did your brother do anything to you unwanted?”

  “No, my aunt did,” Sally said, “she’s a bitch.”

  The first officer suppressed a smile with a cough, but his eyes told me that our trouble wasn’t over.

  “She reported a rape,” his partner continued. “In cases involving incest.”

  “Incest?” I said. “Who told you that?”

  “Are you not brother and sister?”

  Sally said yes and I answered no, and then I clarified it.

  “Are you familiar with statutory rape?” he went on.

  “My dad will be home in a moment,” Sally pleaded. “Can’t you wait?”

  I saw that she was going to cry. “Why don’t we move out of the bedroom downstairs?” the larger officer with the shaved head said. His eyes were now focused and bright. I knew he’d assessed the situation and decided no crime had been committed. By the time we had reached the front hall, the mansion had receded in my mind and had become unreal. If other matters were discussed, I tuned them out.

  When I saw Stan’s face, tears sprung from my eyes. In that instant, I thought he was gone from me forever, but to my endless amazement, he came over and hugged us both. He took the officers into the kitchen with Aunt Gayle, and what was said, I’ve no idea. However when they came out, I could see from Gayle’s face that she had been defeated, and with it, the forces of Satan. She left the mansion, and to my knowledge, never came back. Our troubles, however, were just beginning.

  The officer had gleaned a promise from Stan to get us both separate counseling from New Jersey Juvenile Aid. To this effect, Mr. Drury’s office, my former truant-officer, had been contacted and he’d agreed to directly help. This seemed to satisfy them enough that they made a report and left. My next focus was saving my relationship with Mary. She was arriving at La Guardia tonight, and without Una here, I didn’t know how it would go. Mary might blame Una for the whole matter
. Everyone had long discerned that Una knew everything about the family, so how could she have not known this, and if she knew, why hadn’t she discussed it with Mary, or forbid it with us? Her position in the family might now be in jeopardy.

  Mary might try to take her natural daughter away from me. I didn’t really think this would happen, but it was a possibility. We didn’t go with Stan to pick up Mary.

  “What will happen to us?” Sally asked the first time we were alone.

  I hugged her and we began to kiss. We made love for the very last time. I’ll never forget it and was glad that it happened, but it was one of the saddest things I ever recall from that time. Just like Sally, I could feel the mark had been put upon us and the burden would be greater every time we touched.

  “Your right eye is turning black,” Sally said, tenderly kissing my wounds. I left to shower, and looking at my reflection, I could see that indeed I was getting a black eye. Once again in the mirror, I was a stranger to myself. Mary’s arrival came in with a flurry. She burst into my room as I read, Innovative Drilling Practices, then she forestalled what she was going to say, to examine my face.

  “How long has this been going on?” she asked, her voice hiding her contained fury and saying nothing about my black eye.

  Stan stood behind her, two paces, and Sally straggled into the room. “From the first night that you took me home,” I answered without hesitation. “I slept with Sally that night and most every other night since.”

  This stunned her and she sat on the edge of my bed. “For heaven sakes,” she said softly. She studied her hands and looked slowly over at Sally. “Did he ever hurt you?” she asked. Sally shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “Does Una know about this?” she asked further of me.

  I looked at Sally, who told me with her eyes, to deny it. “I don’t know,” I said.

  For what must have been five whole minutes, all four of us stood or sat in complete silence, then Mary spoke again. “A parent’s job is to protect their children,” she said in an even softer voice, “but I don’t know what to do. This can’t go on. I can see that you love each other, but it’s impossible, just impossible. It’s your duty upheld by law to obey us and incest is a crime in all societies.”